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Primers for the People. 

Edited by EUGENE L. DIDIER. 



No. I 



A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 



BALTIMORE : 
The People's Publishing Company, 

197 North Calvert Street. 
1883. 



Primers for the People. 

Edited by EUGENE L. DIDIER. 



No. I. 



A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 

1./ 




BALTIMORE: 

The People's Publishing Company, 

197 North Calvert Street. 

1883. 






Copyriglit 1883 
The People's Publishing Company. 



.^ 



coisrTEisrTS. 



PAGE 

A GLANCE AT AMERICAN LITERATURE, .... 5 

HENRY JAMES, Jr., 7 

WILLIAM D. HOWELLS, 13 

EDMUND C. STEDMAN, . 18 

GEORGE W. CABLE, 23 

RICHARD PL STODDARD, .36 

RICHARD GRANT WHITE, 31 

FRANCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD, ...... 34 

CHRISTIAN REID, ......... 42 



A GLANCE AT AMERICAN LITERATURE. 



More than a third of a century ago, Margaret Fuller said 
America had no national literature. Yet, at that time Irving, 
Poe, Cooper, Hawthorne, Bryant, Prescott, Emerson, Bayard 
Taylor, Simms, and Lowell were living American writers. 
All of these, except the latter, have passed away, leaving no 
w^orthy successors. The United States presents the extra- 
ordinary spectacle of a nation of readers, with scarcely one 
great national writer — a nation great in arms, progressive in 
science, enterprising in commerce, but unproductive in 
literary genius. We have so-called literary men in abun- 
dance — ^journalists, magazinists, compilers of books — but we 
look in vain for a "bard sublime," for a great American 
novelist, a great American critic. 

Plato banished poets from his republic. America does not 
honor literary talent as much as other professional talent. 
Edgar A. Poe, who, although a man of wayward habits, cer- 
tainly possessed rare intellectual gifts, was forced to confess 
towards the close of his life, that he could not support him- 
self by his pen ; yet that pen had written the Raven, Ligeia, 
the Bells, The Fall of the House of Usher, and other iihique 
compositions which the world will not willingly let die. An 
A^merican poet, glancing at American literature twenty-five 
years ago, satirically said : 

^ " While the polished pen scarce earns a garret, 

Double-entry points to peace and claret." 

Is it much better now? American Congressmen affect to 
laugh at what they call " them literary fellahs." Congress 
has never been distinguished for the literai'y character of its 
members. The average Congressman is a man of mediocre 
ability, who reads nothing but the daily newspapers and 
cares nothing for literature. Henry Clay, the most popular 



6 A GLANCE AT AMEKICAiq- LITERATUKE. 

American orator and the leader of the Senate, was so ignorant 
of literature that he once broke down in trying to quote two 
lines of yerse that are familiar to every American schoolgirl. 
When the last attempt to pass an international coppight 
law was before Congress, a distinguished senator could not 
understand how an author, who was " incited to mental labor 
by the laws of his country, could find that such a law would 
act as a further incitement." He could not or would not 
see that it would act as a " further incitement " by stopping 
the wholesale piracy of foreign books, and thus open a 
market for American literary talent. Years ago Thomas 
Hood said: "America, in the absence of an international 
copyright, can never have a national literature." When 
such a book as A FooVs Errand reaches a sale of 150,000 
copies, and is pronounced a great American work by leading 
journals, it ceases to be a wonder that thoughtful Americans 
should deplore the present degenerate condition of our 
literary criticism. 

America badly wants what Mr. Gladstone calls a " minister 
of justice for the welfare of her republic of letters," to hurl 
into the abyss of oblivion the pigmies who swarm into her 
literary temple. American literature has been kept poor and 
weak by the want of vigorous criticism. The powerful pen 
of Poe was never so needed as now. He maintained that the 
legitimate task of criticism " is not only to point out beauties, 
but to analyze defects, and to show how a work might be 
improved." American criticism is too often creticism, and 
American literature is not what it should be, because Ameri- 
can criticism is what it is. Judging by the extraordinary 
praise bestowed upon indifferent, if not worthless, books, by 
many daily and weekly journals, we are forced to conclude 
that American critics are either very ignorant, or that Ameri- 
can authors follow the advice of Lord Lytton — that "the 
art of being reviewed consists in cultivating the acquaint- 
ance of the reviewers." 

EUGEi^^E L. DiDIER. 



A PEIMEE OF CRITICISM. 



HENRY JAMES, JR. 



Within the last few years, a certain school of American 
novelists — like porpoises, they run in schools — has arisen, 
who, rejecting the old-fashioned notion that a novel should 
be entertaining, frankly declare, like the knife-grinder in the 
Anti- Jacob in: "Story! God bless you I have none to tell, 
sir." Yet these are the novelists, who, one of its members 
modestly claims, have taken the place of Dickens, Thackeray 
and Scott. 

Mr. Henry James, Jr., is the leader of this school of por- 
poises — we mean novelists — the leader of what the Quarterly 
Review calls " the feeble and dreary American novelists who 
are now so much in vogue." We hasten, however, to remove 
from our country the reproach of recognizing Mr. James as 
an American, except in name. He was born here, but his 
father was English, and he was educated very much abroad, 
where he has lived most of his life. He is the Benedict 
Arnold of American literature — the traitor to his country 
in letters as Arnold was in arms — a toady to the English 
aristocracy, a snob of the worst type, whose true home is the 
land of cockneys. We have no language severe enough to 
express our disgust at an American, who, unmindful of the 
privilege of being born under the Stars and Stripes, attempts 
to hold his country up to the ridicule of the denizens of 



8 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 

down-trodden Europe. There is nothing more disgusting 
in the eyes of sensible people than to see an American playing 
the tuft-hunter and sycophant at the skirts of a foreign aris- 
tocracy. 

A nation's literature should be its greatest glory. The 
political independence of Athens perished two thousand 
years ago, yet its noble literature has thrown a perpetual 
interest around the city of the violet crown. The imperial 
tiirone of Caesar has been made more glorious by the writings 
of the great Julius ; the plow of Eobert Burns is not less 
honorable than the sceptre of Eobert Bruce. Shakespeare 
has conferred more true glory upon England than all her 
soldiers from the. time of William the Conqueror to Queen 
Victoria. Washington Irving has done more for the fame 
of America than all the politicians that have mouthed in 
Congress since the formation of the United States gov- 
ernment. 

Every nation should cherish its own literature, but how 
can a -nation cherish such literature as Henry James, Jr., 
supplies? He justly deserves the reprobation of his 
country for his so-called "American portraits." Are all 
American girls flirts ? and all American men fools ? We 
emphatically deny that Daisy Miller is a fair representation 
of an American girl. A caustic English critic has recently 
declared that " the great objection which must be made to 
most of the American novels which are now written, is that 
they are not American and are not novels.^' Every situation 
in the American, which is one of Mr. James's best works, has 
been pronounced impossible and the plot " chaotic." While 
the Portrait of a Lady, one of the longest and also one of 
the least interesting of his novels, has no plot whatever — no 
beginning, middle or end ; the characters are not attractive 
in spite of the author's attempt to make them so, and their 
fate is left undecided, which is rather tantalizing to those 
who have had the courage to wade through nearly seven 



\ 



HENRY JAMES, JR. 9 

hundred closely printed pages. We do not wonder that the 
Quarterly Review asks whether any reader had been kept 
out of bed by the desire to finish The Portrait of a Lady. 
Yet, in the face of all this, Mr. Howells has the hardihood to 
tell the world, in a valueless eulogy, that Mr. James's style 
" is upon the whole, better than that of any other novelist," 
and that the " school, which is so largely of the future as 
well as of the present, finds its chief exemplar in Mr. James." 
In writing which opinion Mr. Howells has merely written 
himself down an ass. 

American literature will never be what it should be while 
American criticism is what it is, — when literary men are 
allowed to use the pages of popular periodicals to puff each 
other ad nauseam, as Mr. HoAvells has puffed Mr. James ; as 
Mr. Howells has been praised by some other friend; and as 
Mr. Stoddard has been puffed in his turn by his friend Mr. 
Stedman. As the Literary World recently pointed out, per- 
sonal familiarity is generally destructive of impartial criti- 
cism. Our great literary want is a just and honest criti- 
cism — a criticism which will dare to give an unbiased 
opinion of a work, free from all business interest. There 
should be no understanding between the counter of the pub- 
lisher and the desk of the editor. It was such a criticism 
that made the first quarter of this century one of the most 
brilliant in the literary annals of England. It is the want 
of such a criticism that gives to mediocre men such as 
Henry James, Jr., a little brief reputation. 

Mr. James writes what may be call society novels; the 
scenes of which are sometimes laid in this country. His 
real ignorance of American society is only excelled by his 
genuine snobbery in attempting to describe it. He regrets 
that we have " no sovereign, no court, no personal loyalty, 
no aristocracy, no literature, no pictures, no political society, 
no church, no clergy," etc. Mr. James has resided in London 
for several years, and we advise him to take up his perman- 



10 A PEIMER OF CKITICISM. 

ent residence abroad. The proper place for such Americans 
is not America, but Europe. His American novels show so 
lamentable an ignorance of our life and manners that they 
might have been written by Anthony Trollope, Edmund 
Yates, or any other ignorant Englishman. We suppose Mr. 
Henry James, Jr., considers himself a cosmopolitan, because 
he has lived in three or four European capitals ; but a cos- 
mopolitan should begin by knowing his own country ; and 
this is just where Mr. James's ignorance is most palpable. 
He may know Paris, but he is laughably ignorant of Boston. 
He may be at home in London, but New York is to him an 
unknown land. 

The conversation in Mr. James's novels is very tiresome ; 
but we must remember that his barren wilderness of words 
is intended as an "analytical study" — that instead of an 
interesting plot, he provides what he is pleased to call 
"philosophical instruction." No wonder then, that the 
crushing verdict has been pronounced against Mr. Henry 
James, Jr., that he is "dull, unspeakably dull." Novel 
readers want to be amused ; they do not go to novels to be 
instructed, and Mr. James will find at no distant day that 
his " analytical " doses will be rejected. 

Here is the way Mr. James makes one of his lovers part 
with his sweetheart : " He glared at her for a moment 
through the dusk, and the next instant she felt his arms 
about her, and his lips on her lips. His kiss was like a flash 
of lightning." Yet, Mr. Howells pronounces the author of 
such stuff superior to Dickens and Thackeray. 

In a recent review of Mr. James's last published volume. 
The Siege of London, the Literary World takes occasion to 
say that the author knows how to play on the harp of fic- 
tion, but it is a harp of one string ; that string being " the 
oft- thrummed one of the American girl abroad." Mr. James 
is gently reminded that he should " rig a new string on his 
instrument," else it will be feared that he has a " monotony " 



HE]^RY JAMES, JR. 11 

of talent rather than a " monopoly." A Scotch critic, Pro- 
fessor Nicoll, while doing full justice to Mr. James's " clever- 
ness," says " he aims at something higher than he generally 
hits." 

The fatal facility with which Mr. James throws off his 
novels, sketches and what not, reminds us of his namesake 
of " solitary horseman " fame, and like the latter he will be 
consigned to the tomb of the Oapulets, where G. P. E. 
James has been buried for a quarter of a century. Mr. 
James has certainly improved in manner since his earlier 
works were written. His boyish lovers no longer swear at 
young ladies and order them about. He still clings, how- 
ever, to certain catchwords, such as " brutal," " immense," 
etc. Much of his facility in writing has been gained at the 
expense of his readers. Everything he writes is rushed 
upon the public before the ink of the last page is dry. This 
rapidity of publication may add to his pecuniary reward, 
but it will not add to his future fame. At thirty-three, 
Macaulay had not made a thousand dollars a year by his 
pen. We suppose Mr. James has made live times that 
amount every year since he was thirty. But Macaulay will 
be read as long as the English language exists. Mr. James's 
novels will be forgotten before he is dead, if he does not 
change his "method." The elder novelists painted the 
manners of the times, they held the mirror up to nature, 
described men and women as they lived and society as it 
was. Their simplicity was their greatest charm. The 
modern " school " affects to despise nature and adores art. 
There is a want of sympathy, of freshness, of genuineness — 
an absence of that touch of nature which makes the whole 
world kin, in these latter-day novelists, which prevents them 
from gaining and holding the public attention. They should 
follow the admirable advice of Longfellow: " Reach a little 
deeper into the human heart ! Touch those strings, touch 
those deeper strings more boldly, or the notes shall die 



12 A PEIMER OF CRITICISM. 

away like whispers, and no ear shall hear them save thine 
own." 

Mr. James's so-called biography of Hawthorne is an ntter 
and irredeemable failure. He cannot begin to understand 
the noble character of Hawthorne, and his attempt to do so 
reminds us of the sign-painter attempting to paint the por- 
trait of Kaphael. Hawthorne wrote four or five novels during 
a life of sixty years ; Mr. James, Jr., writes about that 
number every year; one wrote, not for a day, but for all 
time, the other's are forgotten as soon as they are read. 
This small critic and third-rate novelist has the assurance 
to patronize Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose delicate and ex- 
quisite genius is as far beyond his reach as the extraordinary 
genius of Poe was beyond the appreciation of the money- 
loving Bryant. Mr. James calls Hawthorne's dainty short 
stories, " graceful studies,'^ and says his little historical tales 
" are the only successful attempts at historical novels that 
have been made in the United States." Has Mr. Jiimes 
never heard of Cooper's 8py and the Eevolutionary stories 
of Wm. Gilmore Simms ? 

A man who sneers at his country — its- traditions, its liter- 
ature, its art, its manners, its provincialism, etc., is deserving 
of no mercy at the hands of his patriotic countrymen. Mr. 
James calls the brave farmers who met and fought the 
British veterans at Concord — " American insnrgmts." He 
says " the Americans are the most self-conscious people in the 
world," and alludes to the " general flatness of the literary 
field" of this country. He says "Poe's literary judgments 
are pretentious, spiteful, vulgar, and full of the most 
fatuous pedantry." If Poe were alive, he would make short 
work of such a writer as Henry James, Jr. He would soon 
be numbered among the AVards, Channings, Lords, and 
others whom Poe consigned to SAvift oblivion. 

In conclusion, we are sorry to say that Mr. Henry James, 
Jr., has lost his only chance of immortality by not being 
known when Thackeray wrote his Book of tSiiob.'^. 



WILLIAM D. HOWELLS. 13 

WILLIAM D. HOWELLS. 



Mr. Ilowells claims to have " discovered " Henry James, 
Jr. But who discovered Mr. Ho wells ? We know that 
Columbus discovered America, or rather it was supposed so 
for four hundred years, until recent investigators have proved, 
to their own satisfaction at least, that America was discov- 
ered centuries before Columbus was born. We know that 
iScribner^s Montlilij " discovered " Mrs. Burnett, and we know 
alscf that the discovery will turn out to be a mare's nest, 
should she write any more novels like Through One Admin- 
istration ; but who discovered Mr. William D. Howells ? If 
no one else claims that honor, his discovery must belong to 
himself, for did he not in the Century Magasirie make the 
extraordinary discovery that the " school " of Mr. James 
and himself has made fiction " a finer art than it was with 
Dickens and Thackeray"? The Saturday Review says this 
criticism " might make a stuffed bird laugh." 

Years ago Mr. Howells announced his canon of literary 
art to be, not to look upon man in his " heroic or occasional 
phases, but to seek him in his habitual mood of vacancy and 
tiresomeness." The natural result of the use of such a literary 
canon has been to make Mr. Howells a smoothbore rather 
than a Gatling gun. He has written a half-dozen novels 
and as many so-called plays, not one of which has the faintest 
outline of a plot, as plots were understood by the old -school 
novelists. The mere story of A Modern Instance could be 
told in ten lines. Mr. Howells insists that a plot is not 
necessary, for the simple reason that he cannot construct one. 
His range is limited, but within his range his admirers claim 
that he is inimitable. He has been compared to a skater 
who executes a hundred graceful curves within the limits of 
a pool a few yards square. Miss Austen once described her 
art as ai^ novelist to be " as a little bit of ivory, on which she 



14 A PEIMEU OF CRITICISM. 

produced small effect after mucli labor." Mr. Howells' field 
is the " little bit of iyory." 

Sir Arthur Helps says truly that even ordinary criticism 
is better than none. The monotonous praise tiiat has been 
for years showered upon Mr. Howells by the universal press 
of the United States has done him infinite harm. Had his 
literary faults been properly pointed out to him, he would be 
to-day a stronger and more interesting w^riter than he is. 
Had the critics plainly told him that his men and women 
wanted fidelity to nature, his characters would not so much 
resemble automatons pulled by the same facile hand. For 
twelve years he was the editor of the Atlantic Monthly, and 
it was whispered that the magazine was not prosperous under 
his management. Of this we know nothing and care less. 
But we do know that the position was a most unfortunate 
one for Mr. Howells as an author, because holding the posi- 
tion of editor of the leading literary magazine of America, he 
was exempt from that wholesome criticism which is so bene- 
ficial to every writer. Mr. Howells shows grace and delicacy 
in all his work, but strength never. It may require a certain 
skill to draw out wire to so fine a point that it cannot be 
seen by the naked eye, but what is the use of it ? This is 
just the kind of literary skill possessed by Mr. Howells. 
His fanciful titles, taken out of Shakespeare — A Counterfeit 
Presentment, A Modern Instance, A Woman^s Reason, etc. — 
have followed one another until we are heartily tired of his 
titles, his methods and himself. Is there nothing new under 
the sun ? Cannot American writers give to the world some- 
thing better than this ? 

Mr. Howells says that " Dickens and Thackeray are of the 
past, they and their methods and their interests; even 
Trollope and Eeade are not of the present." So Mr. Howells 
modestly considers himself superior to Thackeray ! Humility 
is certainly not the virtue of the new " school " of American 
novelists. Before sneering at Dickens and Thackeray as 



WILLIAM D. HOWELLS. 15 

obsolete, they should remember that the universal verdict of 
the world has decided differently, and we do not hesitate to 
say that Mr. Pickwick, Col. Newcome, Mr. M^cawber, Henry o) 
Esmond, Ethel Newcome, Little Nell, and hundreds of 
other characters created by Dickens and Thackeray will be 
remembered long after the very names of Henry James and 
William D. Howells are forgotten. 

Mr. Howells " discards nature as unworthy his attention, 
regarding actual life as foolish and insipid." Such being 
the case, we hope when he makes his New England girls sit 
up alone with their lovers long after midnight, that he is not 
describing a phase of social life which actually exists in the 
land of the Puritans. Such things do occur among the 
servant class in Scotland, but we cannot believe that the 
very proper young ladies of Massachusetts are given to such 
indiscretion. According to Mr. Howells, American girls 
are in the habit of sitting upon their lover's knee, while the 
latter catch their heads between tlieir hands and cover their 
lips and eyes with kisses. The misfortune of this " school " 
of novelists is that we can never know whether they are 
writing from fact or fancy — whether they are drawing a pic- 
ture of actual life or drawing on their imagination for what 
does not exist. The stock-in-trade of Mr. Howells appears to 
be an irresistibly charming heroine, possessing exquisite 
beauty, who makes an immediate impression wherever she 
appears. Her career is one succession of triumphs, and 
after slaughtering a score of 'lovers, she finally ends by mar- 
rying the man of her heart and living happily ever after. This 
young lady, with different names, is the heroine of all Mr. 
Howells' novels. They are all cut out of the same cloth. Mr. 
Howells is never exciting ; the most nervous old lady can 
read him without fear. According to him, New England 
mothers retire to the kitchen while their daughters receive 
company in the parlor. 

Mr. Howells is still young enough to improve if he will 



16 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 

take the kindly advice of a well-meaning critic. lie is a 
graceful writer, and if lie would leave the " school " of which 
he and Mr. Henry James are the principal members, we 
think he might do something worthy of his talent. He was 
born in Ohio in 1837; his father was a Welshman, his 
mother was of Pennsylvania Dutch stock. The former was 
the editor and publisher of a country newspaper, and at a 
very early age his son commenced to learn the printer's 
trade. All through his boyhood and up to 1859 he worked 
in his father's printing office. He began to write early, and 
like most American young men of literary proclivities, he 
first tried his hand at verse-making. He was for a time 
news editor of the Ohio State Journal at Columbus. In 
December, 1859, in conjunction with J. J. Piatt, he pub- 
lished a volume called Poems of Two Friends. In the summer 
of 1861 Mr. Howells wrote the Life of Abraliim Lincoln, 
and was rewarded by being appointed United States Consul 
at Venice. The result of his four years' residence in the 
Queen City of the Adriatic was two volumes — Venetian 
Life and Italian Journeys. Eeturning to the United States 
in 1865, he worked for a v/hile on the Nation, and then 
became assistant editor of the Atlantic Mo7ithly, assuming 
in 1871 full charge. In this position he remained until the 
spring of 1881. This was not the literary training of the 
" obsolete " Dickens and the " forgotten " Thackeray. TJiey 
enjoyed no luxurious consulship at the age of twenty-four. 
At that age, Dickens was eai'ning a scanty livelihood as a 
reporter on a London newspaper, and Thackeray was engaged 
in that laborious literary career which was not crowned with 
success until the publication of Vanity Fair in his thirty- 
seventh year placed him among the first novelists of his own 
or any age. No idle dreaming for them beneath the blue 
skies of Italy, no delicious life in the most picturesque city 
of Europe, no delightful wanderings amid scenes made 
memorable by poetry, romance and liistory, no ancient 



WILLIAM D. HOWELLS. 17 

palaces, no picture galleries, no gondolas ! Theirs was a 
stern struggle for a livelihood, but when their day of 
triumph came they were all the better for that early mental 
discipline. 

Since Mr. Howells retired from the Atlantic Monthly, he 
has devoted himself exclusively to writing novels, which 
have followed one another in such rapid succession, that 
almost as soon as one is finished another is rushed into print. 
We doubt very much the wisdom of this rapid publication 
both for the author and the publisher. The public become 
tired of novels by the same author in the same magazine. 
We know that an American magazine which published 
novel after novel by Anthony Trollope, lost $20,000 in one 
year. Except for the pecuniary benefit of the author, the 
publication of serial novels is a positive injury to literature. 
It holds out an irresistible temptation for writers to measure 
their work by the quantity rather than the quality ; being 
paid by the page, the literary tradesman is not so particular 
about what he writes as the number of pages he fills each 
month. Hence the long drawn out stories which make many 
modern magazines a vexation to the spirit. Twenty-five 
years ago, George H. Miles, a writer who is even more " for- 
gotten " than Dickens and Thackeray, said, in his satirical 
poem, Aladdin'' s Palace'. 

" And what in turn cares genius for the age ? 
Boz gaily rattles off his five-pound page, 
Pendennis lazily dictates his story, 
Sure of his pay, superbly dead to glory." 

What would Miles have said had Mr. James and Mr. 
Howells been writing at that time ? They must employ 
stenographers and type- writers to get off" the immense 
amount of work with which they are constantly flooding the 
world. We suggest to Mr. Howells to allow liimself and 
his readers a little rest. Let him enjoy a dolce far nienie 
during his present sojourn in Italy. A year or two of 



18 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 

mental idleness would be of great service to him, and add a 
freshness to his literary work which is greatly needed. 
George Eliot was satisfied with writing one novel in three 
years; Mr. Howells has been writing about three a year. 
But there are novels and novels. The novels of Scott, 
Dickens, Thackeray and other " forgotten " writers are read 
by each succeeding generation, but who would think of 
reading the collected works of Wm. D. Howells ? They 
have made no lasting impression and their very names are 
forgotten. If Mr. Howells and his " school " have imagined 
in their self-conceit that they are to be recognized as the 
American novelists of the future, they will find themselves 
sadly mistaken. 



EDMUND C. STEDMAN. 



Mr. Stedman appears before the world in the rather 
incongruous character of poet and stock-broker. He was 
born at Hartford, Connecticut, October 8th, 1833. He 
entered Yale College in 1849 ; was suspended in 1852 and 
did not return. He then edited two country papers and 
settled in New York as a journalist ; was for a time a writer 
on the Tribune, and during the war was an army corres- 
pondent of the World ; in 1864 he became a stock-broker. This 
is, in brief, a sketch of Mr. Stedman's life. He first attracted 
attention by publishing in the Tribune a satirical poem 
called Tlie Diaynond Wedding. The first collected volume 
of his poems was published in 1860. Alice of Monmouth 
appeared in 1864, since which time stocks and bonds have 
so occupied the attention of Mr. Stedman that he has only 
written occasional pieces. 

Mr. Stedman is also a critic, and occasionally indulges in 
the dangerous literary amusement of criticizing men with 



EDMUND C. STEDMAN. 19 

whose works he is not familiar. We would kindly suggest 
to him that it would be safer, fairer and more honest first to 
read the works which he intends to criticize. His most 
ambitions literary work is the Victorian Poets, when engaged 
in the preparation of which he abandoned Wall street for 
two or three years in order to devote himself exclusively 
to literary pursuits. The barefaced presumption with which 
this Wall Street broker criticizes and patronizes men so dis- 
tinguished in literature as Lord Byron, Walter Savage 
Landor, Coleridge, Tennyson, Bulwer, Browning, Macaulay, 
etc., is simply disgusting. Of Macaulay he says : " I am 
aware that his lines are criticized as being stilted and false 
to the antique, but to me they have a charm ; his ballads 
rank among the worthiest of their class." He mentions 
Longfellow and Howells together as writers — Howells it 
should be remembered was at the time the editor of the 
Atlantic Monthly, and Mr. Stedman's work was published 
by the same house, which at that time owned the magazine. 
Mr. Stedman seems to have fallen in love with Swinburne. 
He calls him " a tamer of words " (whatever that may be), the 
" autocrat of verse," and the " most sovereign of rhymists." 
In his enthusiasm he gets ofi" this extraordinary comparison : 
" Words in Swinburne's hands are like the ivory balls of a 
juggler, and all the words seem to be in his hands." After 
all this extravagant praise, we were rather surprised to read 
that " Swinburne's amazing tricks of rhythm are those of 
the gymnast overleaping his fellows." The word " art " is a 
special favorite with Mr. Stedman ; he uses it in season and 
out of season ; in the Victorian Poets, we venture to say that 
the word appears on an average in every paragraph of the 
book. In his desire to appear learned, he employs words of 
Latin derivation instead of the good old Saxon words of the 
best English literature. He uses the word scholia for mar- 
ginal notes ; excursus for a dissertation ; he uses " easeful " 
instead of easy; he is fond of certain pet words such as 



20 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 

"spontaneity," "repetend," "subjective," " virile," etc. ; he 
dearly loves big words and will never use a simple word 
when he can find an uncommon one. Occasionally he mis- 
uses a word, for instance ^^ susurrus,^ which means a 
whisper, he employs when speaking of Swinburne's rhythm. 
Has Mr. Stedman so schooled himself in foreign tongues 
that he has forgotten his own ? If not, why does he make 
use of such a phrase as " his name less frequently would be 
called " ? "Artist " is another of his pet words : " artist in 
prose," " artist in style," etc. ; so the French say " an artist 
in hair," and " an artist in boots." 

There is a vulgarity about his style, occasionally, which 
betrays a man engrossed in vulgarizing pursuits, and shows 
the money-lender rather than the student, recalls the office 
rather than the library. In speaking of Aurora Leigh, he 
says " its form smacks of the new world," and that it con- 
tains inspiration " to set iq:) sl dozen small poets." It is not 
to be expected that a man whose days are passed amid the 
slang and turmoil of Wall Street should write pure English. 
The stock board and broker's office are not exactly the places 
for acquiring the graceful style of Goldsmith and Irving. 
A man who gives his days to money-making cannot expect 
to give his nights to literary culture. A stock -broker est 
supra grammaticam. Still, even in a business letter, each 
sentence should have a nominative and a verb. Such a sen- 
tence as the following would not be tolerated even in the busi- 
ness letter of a banker : " Last of all, the world's true and 
enduring verdict." Yet that sentence appears in the Vic- 
torian Poets, a book in which style is severely criticized by 
this literary broker. One quality we must give Mr. Stedman 
the merit of possessing : he can use more words to express 
the fewest ideas of any living writer, always excepting Mr. 
Eichard Grant White, whose verbosity is simply sublime. 

Mr. Stedman seems to think that the laurel crown i:>er se 
makes Tennyson the leader of the " Victorian Poetical hier- 



EDMUl^D C. STEDMAN. 21 

archy." Then Pye was the leader "of the poetical hier- 
archy" of the age which numbered Byron, Scott, Moore, 
Coleridge, etc., and Whitehead was the leading poet in the 
age which numbered Goldsmith, Gray, Churchill, etc. — 
Whitehead of whom it was written : 

" Honest Whiteliead came, not worth a pinch of snuff, 
But for a laureate — he was good enough." 

A set of so-called critics in New England at one time 
took up the literary reputations in this country on the points 
of their pens, as Napoleon said he took up the crown of 
France on the point of his sword. This set of fellows, after 
Poe had discovered the genius of Hawthorne, took him up 
and placed him upon the literary throne of America, from 
which no critic hitherto had been bold enough to dislodge 
him. We dare to do so. We say that Hawthorne was not 
an American writer, but a Neiu England writer. He was 
sectional, not national. His range was limited ; his sympa- 
thies narrow. He investigated ruins, but did not rear 
palaces. His characters are shadowy and misty. His novels 
are without form and congruity. His narrative is con- 
stantly interrupted while he delivers a lecture or reads an 
essay. 

Mr. Stedman has made the remarkable discovery that Poe 
caught the music of Annabel Lee and Eulalie from the 
melodious negro songs of the South. He repeats after Gris- 
wold the charge that Poe was " void of moral consciousness," 
"moral responsibility," and such transcendental rubbish, 
but he is good enough to admit that Poe is not a poet of a 
" low grade," and calls him a " thinking man of letters." I 
am also a thinking man of letters, and take the liberty of 
thinking that Mr. Stedman is a donkey. He says Poe's 
criticisms were " dishonest, vulgar, prejudiced and unfair," 
but he kindly adds " I do not hold them to be worthless." 
You do not, — v/e are sorry to say that we cannot say the 



22 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 

same of Mr. Stedman's criticisms. This man of stocks and 
bonds, this Wall Street broker, is not competent to judge 
Poe either as a man or poet. This money-lender, who lives 
in the enjoyment of the good things of earth, presumes to 
speak of Poe's " reckless career " ; this man who fares sump- 
tuously every day, whines over the fact that Poe " ate husks 
with swine " ; this banker-poet, whose life is passed in the 
worship of the almighty dollar, sneers at Poe as one of 
"society's castaways." Out upon such want of kindness 
for a poet who is superior to Edmund Clarence Stedman in 
everything except filthy lucre ! Stedman ! you are not the 
peer of Edgar Allan Poe, — we demand that he be judged by 
his peers, not by such as you are. 

Mr. Stedman's attempt to obtain recognition for his 
friend, Eichard Henry Stoddard, as a poet speaks more for 
his friendship than his sense. We can imagine an English 
reader exclaiming, when he sees the " poet Stoddard " men- 
tioned in the Victorian Poets in the same paragraph with 
Byron, Shelley and Tennyson, — " Who is the poet Stoddard ? 
I never heard of any poet of that name." Fulsome criticism 
of a personal friend is worth no more than the paid pufiEs of 
a newspaper that sells its columns to the highest bidder. 
We cannot force our friends into fame. Every man must 
make his own reputation if it is to be lasting. 

In conclusion we take the liberty of saying of Mr. Edmund 
Clarence Stedman, that as a critic he is a dead failure, as a 
poet he is scarcely mediocre, as a broker we do not know or 
care what he is — he may be the sharpest member of the 
New York stockboard, he may be the closest money-lender 
on Wall Street, he may be a Shylock or he may be a Peabody ; 
that is something with which we have nothing to do. His 
name may be worth something on a bank check, but it is of 
very little value on the title-page of a book. 



GEORGE W. CABLE. 23 



GEORGE W. CABLE. 



Five years ago, George W. Cable was unknown ; now his 
name has been carried from the Atlantic to the Pacific, from 
the Gnlf of Mexico to the Northern Lakes, and across the 
Atlantic to England and France. Like Jack's famous bean- 
stalk, his reputation has grown up almost in a single night. 
Will it be lasting ? That will depend very much upon Mr. 
Cable himself. His present work in the Century Magazine 
is not adding to the reputation of the author of Old Creole 
Days and the Granclissimes. . 

Mr. Cable was singularly fortunate in having a fresh field 
for his literary labor, but it is a field that will be soon 
exhausted. He is not in sympathy with the people whose 
manners, customs and life he describes. He carries into the 
free, gay and warm latitude of the Gulf of Mexico, the 
severity, sternness and coldness which belong to the frigid 
region of New England. He retired from the New Orleans 
Picayune because he was required on one occasion to take 
charge of the theatrical column of the paper; attendance at 
the theatre being contrary to the strict moral code of rules 
of the Presbyterian Church, of which he is a member. At 
one time this professional novel-writer had scruples about 
novel-reading. His favorite novelists now are Thackeray, 
Hawthorne and Victor Hugo. 

It is always interesting to study the beginning of a literary 
career ; we must inform our readers that George W. Cable is 
one of the numerous literary " discoveries," for which Scrib- 
ner's Magazine is responsible. It is necessary to go back a 
little and tell the story of his youth. He was born in New 
Orleans ; his father was descended from a colonial Virginia 
family, his mother came from an old Puritan stock. They 
lived in Indiana until the financial crisis of 1$37, when the 



24 A PEIMER OF CRITICISM. 

family removed to New Orleans, where the elder Mr. Cable 
established himself as a merchant. After failing twice, he 
died in 1859, leaving his family so poor that his son had to 
leave school at the age of fourteen in order to help support 
his mother and sisters. For four years he was a clerk, until 
1863, when he left New Orleans with his sisters to escape 
the Butler regime in that city. He entered the Confederate 
army and fought until the end of the war, after which he 
returned to New Orleans poorer than he left, and became an 
errand boy in a mercantile house at the age of twenty-one. 
His first attempt at literary work was on the New Orleans 
Picayune, under the signature of " Drop Shot." His contri- 
butions consisted of critical and humorous pieces, and 
attracted much local attention. Losing his position on the 
Picayune, as already mentioned, he next became a clerk in a 
cotton broker's office. The firm being dissolved in 1879 by 
the death of the senior partner, Mr. Cable opened a cotton 
broker's office on his own account. It was here he was dis- 
covered by an agent of Scrihnefs Magazine. The success of 
Old Creole Days in that periodical induced him to drop 
cotton and adopt literature as his profession. Thus it was 
that a new star was added to American literature. Will it 
become a fixed star, or will it, like a meteor, flash for a time 
and then disappear ? His field is narrow, and has already 
been overworked. 

Mr. Cable says " a Creole never forgives a public men • 
tion," and much exception has been taken to his delineation 
of the peculiarities of the race. If his description of their 
life and manners has been resented, how would they receive 
Mr. Cable's account of their origin, given before a fashionable 
audience at the Johns Hopkins University, at the close of 
his course of lectures last March ? In the course of a brief 
historical sketch of the Creoles, he said they were descended 
from French soldiers and Choctaw squaws, African slaves 
and girls from the House of Correction in Paris, and from 



GEORGE W. CABLE. 25 

a few of a better class, who were sent over to Louisiana by 
the kings of France, and called Les filles des Cassettes. 
Think of the proud and exclusive Creoles having such an 
ancestry ! 

The Grandissimes is Mr. Cable's most ambitious work. It 
lias too many characters, an obscure plot, minute descrip- 
tions of unimportant people and incidents, and an unintelli- 
gible dialect. It has been said by an eminent American 
philologist that he puts the darkey dialect of Louisiana into 
the mouths of the ladies and gentlemen of New Orleans. Of 
this we know nothing, but we know that this dialect, what- 
ever it is, detracts very much from the pleasure of reading 
Mr. Cable's novels, as the Scotch dialect of Scott takes 
away from the Waverley Novels. There is a want of clear- 
ness of expression in Mr. Cable which betrays a want of 
thought. This want is apparent both in his novels and his 
lectures on the Eelations of Literature to Society, delivered 
at the Johns Hopkins University last spring. These lec- 
tures were thin, intangible and impalpable. They were 
literary soap-bubbles, airy and pretty, but when you attempted 
to grasp them they burst into thin air and left nothing 
behind. They were like whipped syllabub, sweet, but 
unsubstantial. You listened to a soft voice uttering deli- 
cate sentences, but it was vox et praeterea nildl — a voice and 
nothing more, — the sense, if there were any sense in it, 
passed away with the sound. 

We have said that Mr. Cable's school education was com- 
pleted at the age of fourteen, and he very truly announces 
that literature requires no diploma ; and also the discourag- 
ing fact that it holds out no previous guarantee of livelihood 
to its followers, saying, " Silver and gold have I none, but 
such as I have I give unto thee." Mr. Cable has been suc- 
cessful in winning, not only golden opinions, but also " silver 
and gold " by literature, but he must be true to his art, and 
not allow himself to be seduced into writing too rapidly by 
tempting offers from magazine editors. 



36 A PEIMER OF CRITICISM. 



RICHARD H. STODDARD. 



Eichard H. Stoddard commenced his literary career by 
writing yerses for the weekly papers. We have failed to dis- 
cover whether he ever sonnetized in the Home Journal, but 
we are sure that his lines would have been published in that 
sheet provided he was willing to write for nothing. He v/as 
in some way connected with The Round Table, and has been 
" literary editor " of several New York papers, among others 
the Evening Express and Mail, He has been industrious 
with pen, scissors and paste-pot. Born in Higham, Mass., 
in 1825, he has resided in New York since his tenth year. 
His first volume of poems, called Footprints, was privately 
printed in 1849. In 1852 he published Tlie Castle ly the 
Sea, and other poems; in 1853, Adventures i7i Fairy Land, 
a book of verses for young people; in 1857, Toivn and 
Country, and the Voices m the Shells, for children ; also, 
Songs of Summer. But we have neither the time, space, 
nor patience to go over the long list of books written, edited, 
or compiled by Eichard H. Stoddard, most of wliich have 
found their natural level in the Dead Sea of Oblivion. Who 
knows, or cares to know, that Vassar's Tiue7ity-one Years 
Arou7id the World was edited by Eichard H. Stoddard? 
Who knows, or cares to know, that the Stor-y of Little Med 
Ridi7ig Hood was told in verse by Eichard H. Stoddard ? 

If Mr. Stoddard would confine himself to fairy tales and 
nursery rhymes, we should permit him to live in obscurity 
and die in peace. But when he presumes to instruct the 
world in matters about which he is ridiculously ignorant, 
we " cry havoc, and let loose the dogs of war." It is a no- 
torious fact that meu who fail in convincing the world that 
they possess genius, frequently, if not generally, endeavor 
to prove others as barren as themselves. They call themselves 



EICHAKD H. STODDARD. 27 

critics; they are only carpers. Mr. Stoddard has enrolled 
himself in this noble band, but has not succeeded in ad- 
vancing beyond the position of a Mgli private. He seems to 
believe that the only duty of a critic is to pull, or attempt 
to pull, down literary reputations. He pronounces Sir 
William Jones's Eastern Poems " languid exercises in verse." 
He calls Byron's Corsair, Lara, and other extraordinary 
Oriental tales, " lurid glooms," and Moore's exquisite Lalla 
RooTch " a twinkling illumination." 

We have read that Boileau, or Corneille — we have forgotten 
which — did not speak correctly the language he wrote so ex- 
quisitely. We do not know how Mr. Stoddard speaTcs the 
English language, never having had the pleasure of conver- 
sing with him, but we should like to know upon what 
authority he presumes to write such a sentence as this: 
" Neither Pope nor Poe ivere remarkable for veracity." This 
may be good Bowery or Pigeon English, but it is certainly 
not the language of scholars, and should not be the language 
of a would-be critic. 

We do not know whether Mr. Stoddard failed in his origi- 
nal occupation, but we know that the literary ranks are 
largely recruited from failures in other pursuits; we know, 
also, that many good shoemakers, tailors, blacksmiths, are 
lost in poor poets and worse critics. That such a man as 
Richard H. Stoddard should set up as critic is monstrously 
absurd. We want critics badly, but we want critics like St. 
Beuve, Poe, and Macaulay — men who criticized with artistic 
skill — men who spoke with authority on literature — men 
who possessed high culture and supreme taste — men who 
could appreciate beauties as well as discover faults. 

Having failed to set the world on fire by his verses (chiefly 
written for the tender minds of children), and having failed 
to attract attention as the writer of prefaces, introductions, 
and biogi'aphies, Mr. Stoddard, in 1874, appeared in the char- 
acter of a literary resurrectionist. Having turned his wash- 



28 4 PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 

bowl into a paste- pot, and made a contract for a constant 
supply of scissors, he produced the Bric-a-brac Series of 
books. Such books are always popular, because they appeal 
to an ignorant public, and are full of gossip, anecdotes, etc., 
ad captandum vulgus. But to descend from original com- 
position — even from juvenile verses and fairy stories done 
into rhyme — to the paste-pot and scissors, is like a descent 
from the worship of the Immortal Nine to the worship of 
the Almighty Dollar. 

Mr. Stoddard once wrote three and a half verses to the 
" Immortal Memory of Keats," which contained these lines : 

" For while clouds float on high, billows roll, 
Thy name shall worshipped be. Will mine be so ? " 

With all our admiration for Mr. Stoddard, we scarcely 

think his fame will last to the end of the w^orld, and outlive 

" The cloud-capt towers and gorgeous palaces." 

In reading his verses we seem to hear, not an original 
voice, but a sweet echo — the hand indeed is Stoddard's, but 
the voice is that of Keats, Shelley, Tennyson, and Milton. 
His ideas of the pleasures of life are rather vague and 

obscure : 

" O, what a life is mine ! 
A life of light and mirth, 
The sensuous life of earth, 
Forever fresh and fine, 
A heavenly worldliness, mortality divine ! " 

We know Mr. Stoddard was sublimely above the vulgarity 
of knowing what he was writing when he penned the above 
lines. He may find amusement in the sort of thing that 
occupies his time, when " Heaven's bright archer Morn be- 
gins to rain his golden arrows through the banded clouds." 

" I rise and tramp away the jocund hours, 
Knee-deep in dewy grass and beds of flowers ; 
I race my eager greyhound on the hills. 
And climb with bounding feet the craggy steeps." 



KICHARD H. STODDARD. 29 

In a " Hymn to the Beautiful," we are informed that 

" All men worship thee : 
Not men alone, but babes with wondrous eyes." 

" Babes " may appreciate some of Mr. Stoddard's yerses, 
but we humbly confess that we are above them. We think 
it is about time that nonsense should cease to pass for poetry, 
and obscurity for profundity. We do not believe that 
young gentlemen in love are in the habit of Aveeping like the 
Mulberry Man in the Pickwick PajMrs, but Mr. Stoddard 
thinks otherwise, and his love-sick swains, like Launce, lay 
the dust with their tears. Not only do his young lovers 
weep constantly, but the poet himself "has tears in his 
eyes," and sometimes " weeps aloud " — in fact, he is what is 
called a regular cry-baby. The poet weeps, but his readers 
laugh. 

Mr. Stoddard is sometimes spoken of as one of "our 
younger poets " by the ignorant penny-a-liners of the press. 
If a man fifty-seven years old is a " younger " poet, we sup- 
pose Longfellow, who died at seventy-three, was a middle- 
aged poet, and Bryant, who died at eighty-four, was just 
entering upon the " youth of old age." Mr. Stoddard says 
the preparation of the new edition of his poems was a "pain- 
ful duty." We believe him. It is never a pleasure to go 
over the follies of our youth. We honestly confess that we 
have not read this new edition. Life is too short. Our 
opinion of his verses is based upon his Songs of Summer and 
early Poems. 

By reducing literature to a trade, such writers as Eichard 
H. Stoddard lower the dignity of the profession, which once 
numbered Dryden, Addison, Pope, Johnson, Goldsmith, 
Southey, Dickens, Irving, Macaulay and Thackeray. One of 
his last and worst specimens of literary jobbery was the 
Longfelloiu Medley, a catchpenny publication, which, by the 
aid of Mr. Stoddard's ever-ready scissors and paste-pot, was 



30 A PEIMER OF CRITICISM. 

rushed upon the market shortly after the poet's death. The 
most prominent person in this " Medley " is Mr. Ei chard H. 
Stoddard. Praises of Mr. Stoddard's " poems," of Mr. Stod- 
dard's literary work, of Mr. Stoddard's this, that and the 
other, fill every page and disgust every reader. Mr. Stod- 
dard is old enough to know that such stupid self-praise, like 
the unskilful use of the boomerang, injures the person who 
attempts it. The Nation pronounced the Longfellow Medley 
"one of the most disagreeable pieces of literary padding 
we have ever encountered " ; and the Literary World said, 
"The whole book, from beginning to end, was one eter- 
nal I." 

This small poet and smaller critic was convicted last May 
by the Literary World of bare-faced plagiarism from a Life 
of Poe, written by the editor of these Primers. In parallel 
columns, extracts from both memoirs were given — Mr. 
Stoddard's was published in 1879, the other in 1876 — show- 
ing that the former had not only taken the material from 
the latter, but. had copied the very language, and sometimes 
loordfor word. This was a very bold piece of literary stealing ; 
for Mr. Didier's memoir, being prefixed to Poe's Poems, is 
always in print. 

We have elsewhere in this work spoken of Mr. Stedman's 
attempt to give Mr. Stoddard a little brief reputation. We 
do not know Mr. Stoddard. We never saw him. We do 
not know whether he is Mr. Edmund Clarence Stedman's 
brother-in-law, or whether the latter blows Mr. Stoddard's 
trumpet for sweet friendship's sake only ; but we do know 
that it is laughable for Mr. Stedman to mention in the same 
sentence, or in the same chapter, or even in the same book, 
Richard Henry Stoddard and William Morris, Lord Byron, 
Keats, Shelley and Tennyson. 



RICHARD GRAKT WHITE. 31 



RICHARD GRANT WHITE. 



Richard Grant White became ridiculous in the literary 
and social circles of New York, about the time the English 
blondes visited this country, by his enthusiastic burst of 
gush over Pauline Markham. This cockney Beauty had 
legs like a piano and a voice like a fog-horn. Mr. White 
wrote in the Galaxy that " Pauline Markham possessed the 
lost arms of the Venus de Milo and a voice of vocal velvet." 
The delighted Markham read it aloud in the green-room to 
her fellow blondes, pronouncing the last three words " luoice 
of wocal wehveV 

Mr. White's literary career has not been quite so distin- 
guished as Lord Macaulay's, Thackeray's, Tennyson's, or 
even Mr. Longfellow's, so we cannot say when, or how, or 
with what he first astonished the world. He is no chicken — 
although he was born in the Spring — for he will be sixty-one 
years old on the 22d of May, 1883. Like Goldsmith, he is a 
plant that has bloomed late — blooming much later and 
much less than the author of the Deserted Village^ whose life 
closed at the early age of forty-six, an age when Mr. White's 
literary life had only fairly begun. In fact, he is a sort of 
half-century plant. 

We would not like to hint that Mr. White is in second child- 
hood, yet some of his literary opinions are certainly childish. 
For instance: he says he does not know "any living writer 
whose works show more fastidious taste and careful elabora- 
tion than those of Henry James, Jr." After that we should 
not be surprised to hear him pronounce Longfellow a " bard 
sublime," or Bryant a first-rate poet. A writer who has the 
temerity or the cheek to compare That Lass o' Loivrie's with 
Ja7ie Byre, might, with perfect propriety, compare Whittier 
with Shakespeare, Bayard Taylor with Lord Byron, or 
Eichard H. Stoddard with any recognized poet. 



32 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 

Such critics as Mr. White make American criticism value- 
less and ridiculous in the estimation of all sensible men. 
That kind of criticism does not improve our literature. It 
only serves to puff authors up with vanity and conceit, and 
thus prevent them from correcting their faults. Authors 
are like children, if you praise them too much you spoil 
them. Judicious and discriminating criticism is useful to 
a sensible author. But to tell such a writer as Mr. Henry 
James, Jr., that he is superior to every living author in 
anything, except in the rapidity with which he pours out 
his works, is doing a great injustice to that young knight of 
the pen. It will stuff him with an overweening vanity, and 
by making him think himself perfect will fasten more 
closely his faults upon him. 

Mr. White contributed a series of articles to the Galaxy, 
under the title of " Words and their Uses," which we will 
not have the dishonesty to criticise, as we honestly confess 
we have never had the hardihood to read them. As Byron 
said of Wordsworth, " words, — words, — words," — they con- 
tained many words and few ideas. When the Galaxy paid 
the debt of nature — it was natural for such a concern to die 
early — Mr. White had the honor of being transferred, with 
the debt, etc., of the dead magazine, to the Atlantic Monthly, 
whose readers were regaled every month with the astonish- 
ing lucubrations of this literary luminosity. Eather strange 
that the Atlantic should admit an "outsider" within its 
pages, which are sacred to those blessed beings who live 
within sight of that monstrosity in granite which commemo- 
rates the Battle of Breed's Hill ! 

Mr. Richard Grant White is not, strictly speaking, a 
Bohemian. Fortunately for himself he does not depend 
upon his pen for a livelihood. For twenty years he occupied 
a fat office in the New York Custom-house. To be fomous 
when young is to be a favorite of the gods. Mr. White has 
not been thus favored, but the reading public is under a 



RICHARD GRANT WHITE. 33 

heavy debt of gratitude to the considerate politician who 
afforded our author the means of living without employing 
his pen in more literary work than suited his sweet pleasure. 
One of Mr. White's most ambitious literary labors has 
been the philological illustration of Shakespeare. Yes, his 
*' vaulting ambition" induced him to join that numerous 
band of commentators upon the bard of Avon, who by their 
penetrating sagacity have discovered meanings that never 
entered into his thoughts, and, in their endeavors to eluci- 
date his text, have involved their readers and themselves in 
inextricable confusion. In fact, they break Priscian's head 
by their modern interpretation of his words. 

*' Old puns restore, lost blunders nicely seek, 
And crucify poor Shakespeare once a week." 

We regret to find Mr. White in the company of such jack- 
puddings as Stevens, Malone, Theobald, and other so-called 
critics who have sought to bask in the reflected light of 
Shakespeare's genius. But as Mr. White has had the temerity 
to wrap himself in the lion's skin, and attempt to roar like 
the king of beasts, it becomes our painful duty to expose a 
length- of ear exceedingly unleonine and a voice that sounds 
suspiciously like a bray. 

We do not know that Mr. White has decided anything 
that was undecided. We wish to know whether he has 
settled, in his own mind, and if so, how, the vexed question 
so much discussed thirty years ago as to the meaning of 
Hamlet's words in the wild challenge to Laertes at the grave 

of Ophelia : 

" Woo't drink up Eisell ? " 

Did he mean the river Yssel, or wormwood ? After read- 
ing a whole volume on the subject, we knew no more about 
it at the end tlian we did at the beginning. We have 
very poor opinion of men who waste the precious possibili- 
ties of life in discussing sucli trivialities. But, as it has 



34 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 

been very pertinently asked, "Were it not for the re-dis- 
covery of errors long since corrected, and playing at skittles 
with, blunders of their own creation," what would become 
of such writers as Eichard Grant White? No man is so 
learned in human nature as Shakespeare, but most men are 
Aviser than many of his commentators. 

With this general remark, which may be applied as the 
reader sees fit, we dismiss Mr. Richard Grant White to the 
lost tribe of so-called Shakespearean scholars. 



FRANCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD. 



When and where Mr. Francis Gerry Fairfield was born 
we have failed to discover. His name does not appear in 
Allibone's Dictionary of Authors, or in any biographical 
dictionary that we have consulted. We have a dim impres- 
sion that he made liis first appearance in New York, from 
somewhere in New England, about the year 1864*. We 
know he was that year connected in some way with the 
JVeivs. He was too well educated — he had too muoh useless 
learning, he was too classical — to make a successful journal- 
ist. In this practical age and country we throw Greek and 
Latin to the dogs, or to college professors and others, who 
waste the precious years of too short a life in studying Greek 
while neglecting English. 

Mr. Fairfield early caught the Poe fever, and became one 
of his most enthusiastic admirers. He attempted to copy 
his style, and produced some verses and sketches which 
compared v/ith Poe's as " water unto wine." These were 
published in the Home Journal, to which, in 1865, Mr. 
Fairfield became a regular contributor. One of his poet- 



FRANCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD. 35 

ical contributions was called " My Life." We quote two 
stanzas : 

" My soul is like a lute that moans 

In low, mysterious undertones ; 

I listen, try to comprehend 

The notes that murmur, mix, and blend. 
***** 

I sit and dream. A tombstone white 
Gleams in the graveyard through the night ; 
And they who read the epitaph 
Repeat it with a smothered laugh." 

It is not with a " smothered laugh," but a long and loud 
guffaw that we read this absurd imitation of Poe's myster- 
ious but beautiful Ulalume, Having failed to catch the 
divine afflatus of this wonderful poem, he calls it " a mere 
rigmarole in rhyme." We think there is a suspicion of sour 
grapes in this .opinion. " Thus sang he, then died," exclaims 
Fairfield, who assumes to know so much about Poe. " On 
the contrary," said the late Mrs. Sarah Helen Whitman, 
who from first to last was the brave and enthusiastic de- 
fender of Poe's personal and literary reputation, — " On the 
contrary, * thus sang he,' then wrote Eureka, The Bells, An- 
nabel Lee, and others of his most memorable poems." 

Mr. Fairfield is so ignorant of Poe's history that he cannot 
tell a correct life of the poet from an incorrect one. But he 
is continually writing about him, and thus exposing his 
ignorance to the world; whether writing about "spu'its," or 
" clubs," or " beauty," or anything, he lugs in Poe to adorn 
his dull stuff. We call attention to some of his more glar- 
ing mistakes. He says The Raveii was written at Fordham, 
not knowing that the poet did not reside at Fordham till 
long after that poem was written and published. He speaks 
of Poe in 1847, as "the fierce critic of the Broadioay 
Jour nay whereas the Broachuay Journal ceased to exist a 
year before tliat time. He says The Bells and A?inadel Lee 
were written prior to 1847 ; they were written in 1849. 



36 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 

In Scribner's Monthly for October, 1875, Mr. Fairfield 
published an article entitled A Mad Man of Letters, in 
which he attempts to prove that the autlior of the Raven 
was an epileptic subject. Mrs. Whitman exposed the absur- 
dity of Mr. Fairfield's article in a letter to the New York 
Tribune^ in which she says, " When I compare the disparag- 
ing tone of this article with a paragraph from the same 
writer which appeared in the Boston Radical for April, 
1871, 1 am perplexed to account for tlie discrepancy. * The 
Raven, The Ancient Mariner, and Queen Mah, in their 
ghostly energy and magnificent beauty, in their subtle 
etheriality of imagery, in the weird burst of moaning minor 
of their cadences, are among the most powerful creations of 
the imagination, and are, in ratio to their power, remarkable 
for a certain sublimation of the subjective, and dependent 
upon it for their effect.' And again : * In the fiction of 
Bronte, Poe, Hawthorne, Dickens, and other masters of the 
century, we find an intense subjectivity.' How happens it 
that *one of the masters of the century' is now labeled * A 
Mad Man of Letters,' * his sublimation of the subjective ' is 
now * epileptic egotism/ * he was egotistic to the core,' ^ in 
his Eureka there is scarcely an original thought. Poe 
did not think, he was simply a dreamer ' — * sent to college, 
he found his work interfering with his dreams. Hence he 
ran away (!) and afterwards tried to atone for his lack of 
mental culture by cunning devices and feats of the solve-a- 
puzzle kind. He was incapable of honest work'? If this 
piece of amateur surgery is a specimen of honest w^ork, 
one must needs borrow ^sop's lantern to find out its 
honesty.^^ 

In a letter from Mrs. Whitman, dated Providence, E. I., 
October 18th, 1876, she says, " I believe I sent you a copy 
of my letter to the New York Tribune in reply to Mr. 
Francis Gerry Fairfield's Mad Man of Letters. In reading 
that imaginative gentleman's article on Beautiful Women in 



FRANCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD. 37 

Appletoii's Journal for the present month (October, 1876), 
I met with a very characteristic expression which reminded 
me of the epithet I was inspired to apply to him (without 
fully knowing how admirably it fitted him) in the closing- 
paragraph of my letter to the Tribune. In his rhapsody 
about the little * high-bred Barb of all the blonde types ' he 
says : ' She has the pyriform face of Dante's Beatrice, and 
her ears are two pink shells that 07ie is iempjted to cut off and 
2yreserve as curiosities^' Here the proclivities of the Amateur 
Surgeon crop out dangerously, and need looking after.'' 

Mr. Fairfield, some years since, published what he called 
The Clubs of New York, a book which we do not hesitate 
to pronounce the greatest piece of downright pufi'ery we 
have ever had the misfortune to encounter. Everybody is 
praised, from the " stern, fate-like Governor Hofl'man " to 
the " large, grand, good-humored Tweed," and the " great 
Jim Fiske." Mr. Fairfield employs some pet expressions in 
this book which only have to be read in order to be laughed 
at. He calls a great pianist " the King of the Keys " ; a 
bookstore, " a magnificent palace of letters "; Henry Clay, 
"the pet son of -thunder"; George William Curtis, "a 
magician of rhetoric and verbal fretwork "; Joseph Howard, 
"the Carleton of journalists, half fop and half brigand, 
Willisique in his manner, and Lester Wallack in his way of 
wearing his eyeglasses "; Augustin Daly, " something of a 
Napoleon as a dramatic manager." Mr. Fairfield is very 
fond of comparing people to spiders. In his Gluhs of JVew 
York (that wretched book) he compares Jay Gould to a 
spider in his den — we were not aware before that spiders 
had dens — he says Peter B. Sweeny was the " spider of 
Tammany politics," that Dean Richmond " was the great 
political spider, whose web covered the democracy of the 
state." Mr. Fairfield calls a fashionable young nobody " a 
distinguished young gentleman " because his father was a 
millionaire ; he pronounces a small versifier, who occasion- 



38 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 

ally fills a comer in the papers, " a kind of American Ten- 
nyson." We do not know whether Mr. Lester Wallack will 
appreciate being called " the Beau Brummell of the drama," 
but as he compares a half-dozen men to Beau Brummell, 
Ve suppose Mr. "Wallack can stand it. Mr. Fairfield excels 
in covert sarcasm. Eead this paragraph, in which he speaks 
of George Perry, the editor oi the Home Journal : 

" He is a critic whose discrimination, thorough mastery 
of details, keen sesthetical insight, fine culture and profound 
grasp of the philosophy of imaginative production, justly 
entitled him to the van, particularly in relation to poetry 
and art." This would be almost extravagant if applied to 
Goethe, Macaulay, and other masters of literature. Applied 
to the editor of the Home Jour?ial, it is simply laughable. 
Every one who reads that paper knows that its criticisms 
are utterly worthless, that its book notices are merely book- 
sellers' puffs. 

Mr. Fairfield cannot write simple, pure, — in a word, good 
English. His style is that of the Greeks in the most 
vitiated period of Grecian literature, when the barbaric 
splendor of the East took the place of the classic purity of 
Plato. He is fond of quoting scraps of Latin and ancient 
history. Like James 1, he has just enough learning to show 
his folly. In writing about the American Jockey Club he 
exhausts the learning of the encyclopedias and classical 
dictionaries. Here is one specimen of his peculiar style 
picked out of ten thousand. In speaking of the contributors 
whom John Clancy collected about the Leader, he says, 
"they enlivened the Tammany organ with the wittiest 
scintillations of their most fanciful concoctions of romances." 
Mr. Fairfield seems to take a particular delight in calling 
people " scoundrels." Writing about William M. Tweed, 
whom he compared to Napoleon, Frederick the Great, Queen 
Elizabeth, and Lucifer, they are all called " scoundrels." 
" Indeed," says the writer, " to be great politically, it is 



FRAITCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD. 39 

inherently necessary to be a great sconndreV^ " When Lan- 
frey has lifted the veil that hid the real Napoleon, what see 
the gaping crowd ? " Mr. Eairfield asks. " A colossal scoun- 
drel ; a man who was not even a gentleman, a liar in word 
and act, whose whole life was a spectacular drama, of which, 
tinsel-tricked and star-bespangled, he was the central figure. 
When Froude has pufied away the illusion enveloping about 
Queen Elizabeth, what remains ? A coarse, vulgar, jealous, 
intriguing female scoundrel ; a coward who murders a rival 
with pretext, having hinted the propriety of her assassina- 
tion to every villain about the court. Stripped of the splen- 
did mystifying verbiage of Carlyle, what is Frederick the 
Great ? The coarsest, vulgarest, weakest, fustiest, most 
colossally egotistical scoundrel of them ail ; the prototype of 
Mr. Tweed, who is here recommended to the next success- 
worshipping Carlyle as the subject of an historical epic. It 
is one of the merits of human wickedness that it can be colos- 
sal, sensational ; of human goodness, that it cannot. So, 
Lucifer is a deal the grandest and most fascinating figure in 
Paradise Lost, as Tweed has been in New York politics, 
playing with his puppets as Napoleon did, and shifting the 
stage scenery of politics to suit his own purposes. A 
Frederick the Great in foxiness and cunning — Oarlyle's hero 
and man of success over again! Poor demented Carlyle, 
who can find no heroism except in success villanously huge, 
hugely villanous ! " " Poor Carlyle," indeed, to be attacked 
in such " villanous " English, by Francis Gerry Fairfield ! 
We have never hesitated either in private or public, to 
express our opinion of Carlyle, but we have always en- 
deavored to do so in simple English. Our opinion has been, 
and still is, that a person must be either a madman or a 
fool who reads Carlyle's Germanized jargon, with its capi- 
talized words, its involved sentences, its false deductions and 
its scornful contempt. His style alone is enough to con- 
demn him ; it is neither English nor German, neither Latin 



40 A PKIMER OF CRITICISM. 

nor Scotch, but a monstrous blending of them all, the result 
being disgusting to read and impossible to understand. 
Compare Carlyle's style with the clear, graceful stjle of 
Goldsmith, which is so easy and delightful to read ! Car- 
lyle's admirers think him profound, whereas he is only in- 
comprehensible. They think a man must be deep because 
they cannot understand him. We do not think Oarlyle 
either a profound philosopher or a great thinker, but an 
ass who put on the skin of the lion and attempted to roar 
with the deep voice of the king of the beasts. " Man is, and 
always was a blockhead and a dullard," says Carlyle in his 
Sartor Resartus. Carlyle was a nian and described himself 
in this universal condemnation of mankind. If Carlyle had 
any ideas worth telling to the world, why did he not tell 
them in intelligible language ? Speech is given to man to 
express his ideas, thoughts, wishes, etc., but if he speaks in 
an unknown tongue, he might as well address himself to the 
passing winds for all the good it does. It would be very 
strange, if in the twenty-seven volumes written by Carlyle, 
we did not find some striking passages, some remarkable 
utterances. But these are only occasional oases in a Sahara 
of stone and sand. 

We say unhesitatingly, decidedly and unqualifiedly that 
Thomas Carlyle has palmed upon the world a mass of utter 
and absolute rubbish under the name of philosophy. If he 
did not want to be understood, he has taken a very effectual 
way of accomplishing his purpose, especially in his later 
works. His writings may be loaded down with pure gold, 
but it is buried in the depths of the earth and is less valu- 
able than a little silver coin which circulates. 

But to return to Mr. Fairfield. In 1877 he attempted to 
add criticism to his brilliant achievements as a poet and 
story- writer. True to his first love, he selected the life and 
literature of Poe as a subject upon which to display his 
learning. Here is a specimen from the whole cloth, in 



FKANCIS GERRY FAIRFIELD. 41 

which he is about as incomprehensible as " poor demented 
Carlyle " himself : " An examination of the fluctuations of 
public sentiment for any given number of years — say, for 
half a century, by way of establishing a limit — reveals this 
curious psychical law, to wit, — that its movements are proxi- 
mately measurable wave-movements, that may be imperfectly 
described as rhythmical impulses, but are, perhaps, more 
exactly in the nature of psychic pulsations. The develop- 
ment of Greek literature, for illustration, has something of 
the sensuous progress of Homer's hexameters, and the fluc- 
tuations of Hellenic sentiment and taste, from Homer to 
Pindar, may be compared to a series of dactyls and spondees, 
with appropriate csesurae to mark the occasional pauses 
during which the Greek literary development rested pre- 
paratory to a new movement. This psychic pulsation, as 
concerns the English-speaking races, is decidedly less com- 
plex than that which is illustrated in Hellenic literature, 
and, therefore, more susceptible of exact mathematical 
analysis, being definable, perhaps, as an iambic pulsation, 
fixed, regular, and decisive, without a vestige of that sliding 
and indeterminate movement that the Italians so felicitously 
describe as hisdrucciole. The tendency to complexity in 
those psychic pulsations, of which public sentiment essen- 
tially consists, and which constitute its dynamic property, is, 
perhaps, more noticeable in American than in English 
literary taste. In curious harmony with this tendency to 
more complex pulsation, American poets prefer an anapest 
to an iambic rhythm ; the trisyllable sinuosity of the one to 
the dissyllable simplicity of the other; and are more de- 
cidedly complex in their metrical movements than their 
English co-workers in the art of all arts — the art of causing 
beautiful imaginings to sing ; of adapting to melody, not the 
psychic life only, for that is the function of music proper^ 
but the imagination verbally expressed, also." 
We forgot to mention that in Scribner's Monthly for 



42 A PEIMER OF CRITICISM. 

September, 1873, Mr. Fairfield published some verses called 
" My Wolves J^ In this piece, we are entertained after this 
manner : 

" There are three wolves that hunt for men, 
And I have met the three ; 
And one is HuDger, and one is Sin, 
And one is Misery." 

In this same charming specimen of magazine, or machine 
poetry, the author gratuitously informs us that the " fancies " 
which "flit through his brain" are " scarcely sane." We 
hope this honest confession was good for the soul of Mr. 
Fairfield. 

One of Dean Swift's signs of genius was that the dunces 
are in a confederacy against him. Dryden had his Shadwell, 
Pope his Dennis, and Poe his Fairfield. Dryden and Pope 
survived the attacks of the dunces, and Poe will survive the 
attacks of Fairfield. As a critic, Francis Gerry Fairfield is 
a stupid failure. As Margaret Fuller said of Carlyle, "on 
this subject he is delightfully absurd." The attacks of Mr. 
Fairfield have about as much effect upon American authors 
as the attacks of the Liliputians had upon Gulliver. And 
with this remark, we dismiss Mr. Francis Gerry Fairfield 
forever from our thoughts. 



CHRISTIAN REID. 



A little more than ten years ago, Valerie Aylmer, a novel 
by Christian Eeid, was published, and attracted immediate 
and wide attention. It was a genuine surprise, not only to 
the public, bu'^ to the most intimate friends of the author. 
The name of Christian Eeid had never appeared among the 
contributors to any magazine or periodical, nor was she 
known to have any special literary tastes. Seldom has the 



CHKISTIAN REID. 43 

first book of an author been so successful as Valerie Ayhner, 
Ten thousand copies were sold in a few months, and another 
novel from Christian Reid was eagerly expected. Her 
second novel, Morton House, was almost as great a disap- 
pointment as Valerie Ayhner had been an agreeable sur- 
prise. It was more ambitious, but less natural, less inter- 
esting, less readable than her first work. From that time. 
Christian Eeid became one of the most industrious writers 
of the times, and novel after novel came from her pen with 
the regularity of semi-annual dividends. She soon became 
very popular with the young girls and middle-aged spinsters, 
who are the chief patrons of circulating libraries, and her 
novels were in almost as much demand as Ehoda Brough- 
ton's, Mrs. Alexander's, or novels by the author of Airy 
Fairy Lillian. Whether this popularity is a proof of 
Christian Reid's merits, or whether it is only another evi- 
dence of what the genuine novel-reader can do in the way 
of " devouring," we will not here discuss. 

In the spring of 1877, After Many Days was published. 
As this is a fair specimen of Christian Reid's novels, and as 
it appeared about midway in her literary career, we propose 
to examine it at some length, and upon its merits alone. 

The scene opens in a " woodland glen into which the soft 
April sunshine streamed." Amy Reynolds, a girl of six- 
teen, and Hugh Dinsmore, a youth of eighteen, are intro- 
duced. He has a passion for art, and pants after fame. She 
has a passion for wealth, and pants after social distinction. 
He loves her. She does not love him. Christian Reid 
thinks like Byron, that description is her forte. She is mis- 
taken ; her descriptions are the most elaborate and the least 
interesting of all her writing. Her first novel was her best : 
Valerie Ayhner was really an exceptionally good first book. 
In most, if not all, that followed, there is a general as well 
as particular air of sameness, which becomes tiresome after 
a half-dozen repetitions. 



44 A PRIMEE OF CRITICISM. 

In After Many Days we are introduced to the same 
Southern village, which never had any real existence; the 
same people, who never, by any possible chance, ever lived 
in the same village ; the same commonplace conversation ; 
the same description of scenery ; the same constantly smok- 
ing young men. (We would respectfully suggest to the 
author that young men are not always smoking, any more 
than young women are always gossiping.) We have been 
in many Southern villages, but we have never seen " vivid 
gas-light stream on crimson aisles and crimsoned cushion 
seats," as in the church at Edgerton. We travelled in the 
South before the war and since, but we never saw a " mulatto 
boy dressed in livery," nor have we ever known Southern 
villagers dine at seven o'clock. 

Christian Eeid is indebted to the English novelists for 
even the names of her characters. In this book she has 
borrowed Trafford and Grantham from Mrs. Alexande-r, 
Marchmont from Miss Braddon, etc. Brian Marchmont 
seems very familiar to us. He is one of those fastidious, 
fortune-hunting, varnished vulgarians whom the author has 
introduced to us several times. We cannot say that he im- 
proves on acquaintance. Miss Waldron, the rich heiress, 
has a face as " clear-cut as a cameo." Marchmont wants to 
marry Miss Waldron for her money, but cannot resist flirt- 
ing with the piquant Amy Eeynolds. The same familiar 
old story follows : Amy is dazzled by Brian's showy quali- 
ties and falls in love with him ; he is disloyal to the heiress. 
His duplicity is discovered at Miss Waldron's birthnight 
ball, where Amy has achieved a triumph as a singer. Quite 
a " scene " takes place : Brian is disgraced in the eyes of 
Miss Waldron, while Amy's love for him is turned to bitter 
hate. Mr. Archer and Marchmont; whom the latter accuses 
with meddling in his affairs, quarrel ; a duel follows, 
Archer is desperately wounded. In her anxiety for the 
latter. Miss Waldron betrays her love for him. In the 



CHRISTIAK EEID. 45 

meantime Marchmont leaves Edgerton. Amy loses her 
voice by diphtheria, and thus ends her chance to be a public 
singer. The first part of the book terminates with the mar- 
riage of Amy to Mr. Trafford, a millionaire, old enough to 
be her father, and the engagement of Miss Waldron to Mr. 
Archer. 

The second part opens in London, at the beginning of the 
season. Ten years have passed. Mrs. Trafford is now a 
wealthy and brilliant widov/, possessing *' beauty so extrava- 
gant, that painters and sculptors raved over the faultless 
outlines of her face and figure." This description reads like 
a passage from one of the excruciating New York Ledger 
stories, but, as After Many Days was written for the 
Chi7nney Corner, it suited very well. 

By a remarkable coincidence, Amy, Marchmont and Hugh 
meet in London after ten years. Marchmont is now a 
widower, still fortune-hunting. He renews his acquaintance 
with Amy, who receives him with perfect indifference. The 
most unnatural scene in the book is the meeting between 
Hugh find Amy after their long separation. They had 
parted with indifference on one side and anger on the 
other. In the meantime he had become a distinguished 
artist, she a brilliant woman of fashion. They meet again 
as old friends, and resume the intimacy of their early village 
life. Marchmont attempts to renew his former intimacy 
with Amy, urged by the wish to win her fortune. She 
spurns him with cool contempt. He swears revenge. He 
takes his revenge by persuading her sister to run off to Paris 
with him ; but on the way a railroad accident occurs, and 
Marchmont is fatally injured. The book ends by Amy 
marrying Hugh, whom, she once said, she never could love.. 

Christian Eeid's last novel, A Heart of Steel, is so loaded 
down by long and tiresome descriptions that the whole 
interest in the book is destroyed. The scenes are laid in 
Paris and Rome ; palaces, churches, sunrise, sunsets, moon- 



46 A PRIMER OF CRITICISM. 

light, mountains, valleys, rivers, streets, etc., are described 
with the minuteness of a " special correspondent " who is 
paid by the column. Irene, the heroine, is extravagantly 
overdrawn, and while possessing the beauty of the angels, 
she is also possessed by a spirit of hatred and revenge which 
belongs to the demons. The conversation is very stilted, the 
love scenes unnatural, the characters full of promise which 
ends in nothing, and the whole novel a sad disappointment. 
We wish well to Christian Eeid, therefore we shall 
point out some of her most striking defects. In the first 
place, she is too fond of pet words such as " gloaming," 
" shimmering," " stately," and such expressions as " pretty 
enough for a picture," " eyes eloquently soft," " shining 
jewels," " magnetic voice," " milk-white teeth," etc. Every 
lady's toilette is minutely described every time she makes 
her appearance. Women of the world are made to blush 
like schoolgirls on all occasions. Men of the world do not 
" turn pale " at women's words. In conclusion, we are glad 
to say that Christian Reid's books are always pure, and 
therefore perfectly safe for young girls to read. If her novels 
are wanting in variety and power, they are never wanting in 
the refinements and proprieties of life, in which respect, we 
are sorry to say, too many of our female novelists are sadly 
deficient. 



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